A fifth attempt at learning counterpoint

As I sat down to write this, I started wondering where I originally got the idea to study counterpoint… and I’m not sure I can remember. I first studied it way back in music college. I was studying for a year at BIMM (some good points, some bad points, a blog post for another day), and after being there for three days, I damaged a tendon in my elbow.

I couldn’t play guitar for the entire first term.

Which was frustrating to say the least.

Anyway, I needed to do something to keep my brain occupied. Something I cannot stand, is doing nothing.

So, I decided to tackle some more in depth music theory. Somehow, somewhere, I read that JS Bach had studied counterpoint, so I found an English translation of the book that he used – Gradus ad Parnassum (Amazon link), and started studying.

I learned some cool things, and was able to write for two voices.

After my arm healed, it was back to learning guitar and I didn’t have time for my counterpoint study – which is another way of saying, I gave up.

I took another crack at it a couple of years later, but didn’t get very far. Then I started learning counterpoint from another book but, again, didn’t get too far.

On a slight side note, I recently changed rooms in the house I rent (currently, I rent a room in a shared house), and had to move all my books, and came across my first counterpoint book.

Which got me wondering,

What happens if I work on this for an hour every day?

Well, what happens is I get badass at writing counterpoint.

So… that’s what I’ll be doing. My YouTube channel has been a bit bare of late, but, I’ll be uploading examples from the book and my completion of the exercises onto YouTube as I go (subscribe to my YouTube here or to my email list to get fresh guitar videos), posting some notes from each chapter on here, and I’ll make a download on the store page of the tabs I make for the examples and exercises.